A New World for Torchwood

As reported in Doctor Who: Podshock, the Doctor Who spin-off series, Torchwood is being relaunched in the US on the Starz network.

The HollywoodReporter.com has an article reporting that name of the rebooted series in the US is Torchwood: The New World. Like last year's acclaimed Torchwood: Children of Earth I would suppose. It is to be ten episodes which to my understanding are telling a story much the same way as Children of Earth did with its five episodes run.

The new story will follow a CIA agent (Rex) and analyst (Ester) who tackle an alien-related global issue. Torchwood, having been destroyed and disbanded, is 'like a legend now ... it's like something that's ceased to exist and is now spoken of only in whispers.' Soon, Rex and Ester are on the run and are seeking out the help of Captain Jack and Gwen.

'The two teams coming together is a big part of the story -- are they friends or enemies? There's a lot of sparks and excitement.'

'We definitely have a really big story to tell,' added executive producer Julie Gardner. 'It's absolutely rebooted to welcome in a new audience.'

Although it is being touted as a 'reboot,' from the description so far, it seems more along the lines of a reboot that the 2005 episode 'Rose' was a "reboot" of Doctor Who. In other words, instead of starting from scratch retelling the tale, I suspect it will still recognize its own past. Though I could be wrong, we shall see.

So it will have a CIA agent named Rex? I suppose it could always result in a new spin-off series called 'Rex is Not Your CIA Agent'… No? Perhaps Starz could pick up Rex is Not Your Lawyer as well. I digress.

The promo posters seen here for Torchwood: The New World include: "Coming Summer 2011"

I should had also included that The Chicago Tribune reported that Russell T Davies has "firmed up the writing staff" for the upcoming new seires Torchwood: The New World on Starz.

Davies, who created the "Doctor Who" spinoff, will of course write several episodes of the 10-part series, but other writers for Season 4 include John Shiban ("Breaking Bad," "Supernatural," "The X-Files"), Doris Egan ("House," "Tru Calling," "Dark Angel'), Jane Espenson ("Game of Thrones," "Battlestar Galactica," "Buffy") and John Fay (a U.K. "Torchwood" writer).

I'll certainly be watching the new series, but I'm not going to get my hopes up about it. For me, Torchwood has been a show that consistently fails to live up to it's potential for greatness. If Torchwood: New World turns out to be great, that will certainly make me happy. The descriptions of the show so far sound too much like the show is being 'americanized' which would only make the show go even lower for me than it already is.

This news actually broke out the day I was in Cardiff at the Torchwood Livejournal Meetup of all things.We were sitting in someone's hotel room having literally just finished watching Barrowman on 'Tonight's the Night' when another friend found a link to this on Twitter.

Now, the group of people I was with aren't exactly what I'd call hardcore 'hysterical women' (the 'hysterical women' were having their own meet up at the same time) but many of us are quite wary about this new series, very similar to the way many Doctor Who fans were when Matt Smith was annouced as the 11th Doctor.There was lots of debate and dicussion had by the group of us but the conclusion we all came to was this.

"The wait and see approach"

For us, it's not going to be the same show we fell in love with, because that show is well and truly dead.Half the team is dead, the HUB is no more, and now the Cardiff Riff has up and closed itself (which doesn't make any bloody sense if you think about it and is just RTD being lazy and getting Moffat to clean up his crap... but anyway)The Welshness, the charm, the campy fun that we loved, no more. Taken away in favour of fanfare, for more a COE type series, more mainstream.

But that doesn't mean that it's going to be bad. We could fall in love with it all over again, for very different reasons to why we fell in love with the Cardiff based Torchwood.

It was an odd day for me with this news breaking, because literally that morning I was at the Ianto shrine (which is still growing and growing, and I added to it as well) and also because I'm very much on both sides of fandom. On one hand I'm on the side that didn't like COE and would like Ianto back (or at least get some bloody closure which would be nice) as well as the other side that liked COE, mostly, and is looking forward to seeing Torchwood change (hopefully for the better)

I'm really hoping that RTD will prove us wrong, thinking that we will hate this new Torchwood, and give us something amasing that will soothe the hurt COE inflicted on us.